For my current project I need a detection if the cookies are enabled or not in the user’s browser.
The easiest way to do this is by using this code:
The CakePHP way is almost similar:
Ok, it’s not rocket science, but it helps 
Posts Tagged ‘PHP’
Autoload your javascript and css in CakePHP
December 20th, 2008Have you ever wanted to have all your css or javascripts files loaded automatically once they are on place under /webroot/js and webroot/css folders? Well this is the solution.
What is all about
I’ve build a quick helper which will include all files under the js/ and css/ directories. So once the javascripts and css are there, they will be loaded automatically.
How to use it?
Using it is really easy. It’s like a normal helper:
1. add the file autoload.php under your /app/views/helpers
2. add it in the $helpers var in the controller
3. add the following snippet in your layout file. It should be under /app/views/layouts:
<?php echo $autoload->javascript();?>
This will include all files under /webroot/js
<?php echo $autoload->css();?>
This will include all files under /webroot/css
<?php echo $autoload->all();?>
This will include all files under /webroot/js and /webroot/css
Key features:
1. The helper includes all files recursively.
2. The helper includes also files under /root/vendors/js and /root/app/vendors/js too (same apply to css). Vendors are loaded first. (Thanks to suggestion from Juan Basso)
3. The order of the files in one directory is based on the name, so now you can control the order as well. (Thanks to suggestion from Juan Basso)
4. Files starting with . (dot) are not included, files under directories starting with . are not included as well, so you can exclude some files
5. if you want to load some files after other use directories. For example if you want to include plugins after the main lib (jQuery), place them in plugins directory like:
js/plugins/plugin_one.js
js/plugins/plugin_another.js
js/.hidden/plugin_third.js
js/jquery.js
the result will be:
(same apply to css as well)
Warning: I’ve noticed that this helper doesn’t work properly with scriptaculous, because the script tries to load the additional plugins and they fail, but for jQuery there is not a problem at all.
Finally here is the code of the helper:
» Read more: Autoload your javascript and css in CakePHP
Blast from the past
November 10th, 2008Hey guys,
last week I’ve worked on a project which I finished somewhere in spring of 2007 and I decided to share my experience with this post. I don’t know did you had such experience, but for me it was interesting, because working on old code is always challenge.
Basically, the project was really small one, which uses 80% of scaffolding, so really nothing complicated. Now the client wanted some extensions to the core functionality /like adding few more look-up tables and some basic reports/ and because I was the only one developer who worked on it, they ask me to do this and I agreed.
My first thought was to upgrade the core CakePHP lib to the last version, but after thinking I decided not to, because if something goes wrong /like some deprecated functions/, I need to do more work in debugging rather than focusing on the real tasks.
What I noticed while I coded?
The major one – Improvement of the console script. In the past it was in the /cake/scripts/. In the folder there were acl.php, bake.php and bake2.php, extract.php for label extraction and master bake which I never used. Now, the console script is more advanced and provide more functions. Still I am not big expert on it and I still using it for basic operations .
Fully translated labels – it’s related to the previous one – when the code was generated with old bake script, some of the labels weren’t wrapped with __() function and especially for me it was biggest pain. Someone could tell me that there was ability to modify the templates, but I personally never did it.
The truth is that CakePHP in fact is improved a lot since then. Hopefully it will continue in this direction in the future as well.
Anyway, it was really interesting experience for me.
The dummy mistake while coding
July 4th, 2008No body is insured from stupid mistakes while writing code. I am not insured, but subscribed for such things.
Here is the story:
Yesterday, while I was working for a small project I lost 1 hour to detect the stupidest mistake I ever made. Here I will explain what happened and how dummy I fee after that.
I am writing an application where users insert records into the database, and after that on every show of the record, there is a counter field which need to add up the number in it. Simple and easy situation.
While I was working I noticed that only one record /from 5 in the database/ got updates on his counter fields. All other had 0, while I was petty much sure that I’ve seen all these records on the screen. Well, I forced showing the 0 rows but the result was the same. Then I start investigating what could be the problem, but in the database everything was just fine. I deleted all records and started inserting texts /because there are some text fields important in this story/ one by one. Strangely, but again some of the records got update, some not. Finally /by accident/ I noticed, that counter changes when there is a space before or in the end of the value of the text I entered.
» Read more: The dummy mistake while coding
Using more than one database connection in CakePHP
April 10th, 2008Probably is pretty obvious for most of the advanced users, but when I started my experience with CakePHP I read a lot of configuring a database, but not multiple ones. There are articles how to use database for development and for production without changing anything but rewriting a function in DATABASE_CONFIG class.
These days we need to choose way of splitting the functionality and we have to decide: Shall we use different databases or shall we put a prefix for every table. So far we choose to use prefix, but I dig into this and I realized that every model could be attached to different database.
Here is the example how to do this:
» Read more: Using more than one database connection in CakePHP
Security Issue in CakePHP
March 29th, 2008I notice this recently when we start creating the security component of a project. The best way to explain the issue is to give an example:
Imagine that in your application you create an action “edit profile” where each user can change his personal details for the account. If course there will be fields for changing user’s real name, password, email etc., but the username field should be readonly.
The direct approach to create such page is to reuse “edit” action of the user’s controller, but instead of getting the ID from the url, it need to be fetched from the session’s auth variable. The second thing which you have to do is to remove “username” field from the view and you are done. Well, fast and easy, but not very secured…
» Read more: Security Issue in CakePHP
htmlSQL class – quite nice way of parsing html
December 11th, 2007Today I found a class written in PHP which implement the idea of using SQL syntax while parsing HTML documents – htmlSQL. The idea of the author – Jonas David John – is quite simple. If you want to parse a HTML document, let’s way you want to parse all divs with class “row”,the syntax will look like normal SQL:
SELECT * FROM div WHERE $class == "row"
Looking familiar isn’t it? There is also function connect() /which define the html source/ and fetch_array() which contain the results after the query.
There are few examples included in the library package and here is the simplest one:
» Read more: htmlSQL class – quite nice way of parsing html
CakePHP and Character Set in the Database
October 1st, 2007Today I found something in the CakePHP which saves me a lot of effort when I need to migrate the database as well as searching for non-English characters from the Database. What is the story:
I had 2-3 projects build with Cake which were for non-English environments. That means the localization of the projects as well as storing proper data into DB with proper encoding. The current project is the same.
In these projects I saw that the data was not stored properly in the MySQL. From the Cake project interface everything looks ok, but when I open phpMyAdmin – the chars looked like strange symbols /not ??? neither ӗ&୶/. So far I ignored this because as far it is working from CakePHP interface for me everything was ok.
» Read more: CakePHP and Character Set in the Database
Extended Autocomplete Helper
September 3rd, 2007When I started with CakePHP, my first project includes also Autocomplete functionality for some fields. Of course I start using default Ajax Helper provided from the library. The main problem was that in most of the cases I needed the ID of the string which I searched. The best example is the Country list which is very easy to be accessed with Autocomplete, but instead to messing up with strings as usual developer I wanted to have the ID of the specified country. I used some kind of hack by adding callback function onComplete, which checks the selection in the Autocomplete field, and by this selection set hidden ID field, but as you can imagine this is not the best choice, first of all because it’s a hack – you rely on a sting which already sound as a hack /imagine if you are searching in a list there are some duplicated entries – examples are too many/ and second if you rely on callback this mean that you need another second or two for the second responce. Anyway, by giving this examples just wanted to convince you once again that Autocomplete helper with Key and Value related are really necessary in the projects /or at least that’s what I am thinking./
Well so far the default Autocomplete helper doesn’t provide such functionality. That’s why I created this helper which solves this problem partly. Why partly? You will see the answer of this in Strict Autocomplete with Scriptaculous (Part II)
» Read more: Extended Autocomplete Helper
Nik Chankov is a web developer, with experience in various fields and frameworks. He has 10+ years of experience in web development. Currently working in his own company 
Loading ...
